Typically, each battery powered device such as a wireless electronic device requires its own charger and power source, which is usually an alternating current (AC) power outlet. Such a wired configuration becomes unwieldy when many devices need charging.
Approaches are being developed that use over-the-air or wireless power transmission between a transmitter and a receiver coupled to the electronic device to be charged. Such approaches generally fall into two categories. One is based on the coupling of plane wave radiation (also called far-field radiation) between a transmit antenna and a receive antenna on the device to be charged. The receive antenna collects the radiated power and rectifies it for charging the battery. Antennas are generally of resonant length in order to improve the coupling efficiency. This approach suffers from the fact that the power coupling falls off quickly with distance between the antennas, so charging over reasonable distances (e.g., less than 1 to 2 meters) becomes difficult. Additionally, since the transmitting system radiates plane waves, unintentional radiation can interfere with other systems if not properly controlled through filtering.
Other approaches to wireless energy transmission techniques are based on inductive coupling between a transmit antenna embedded, for example, in a “charging” mat or surface and a receive antenna (plus a rectifying circuit) embedded in the host electronic device to be charged. This approach has the disadvantage that the spacing between transmit and receive antennas must be very close (e.g., within thousandths of meters). Though this approach does have the capability to simultaneously charge multiple devices in the same area, this area is typically very small and requires the user to accurately locate the devices to a specific area. Therefore, there is a need to provide a wireless charging arrangement that accommodates flexible placement and orientation of transmit and receive antennas.
With wireless power transmission there is a need for systems and methods for disposing the transmit antennas in furniture or buildings to convenient and unobtrusive wireless power transmission. There is also a need for adjusting the operating characteristics of the antennas to adapt to different circumstances and optimize power transfer characteristics.